Transforming quality and safety with team engagement

By Arup Roy-Burman, MD
Co-Founder and CEO, Elemeno Health

Great summary story on the PBS News Hour highlighting the need for widespread adoption of best practices for sedation, pain control, and mechanical ventilation for the reduction of Post-Intensive Care Syndrome.

Trying to get physicians to change clinical practices without readily visible results is hard. However, there is hope to accelerate change. Frontline ICU staff (nurses, therapists, young docs) are more open to adopting new practices, especially if the practices can be standardized across physician leaders.

Microlearning and mobile can make key best practices easily digestible at the point of care, by the entire ICU team, empowering frontline staff with the knowledge to deliver the right care at the right time. In turn, these troops can push best practices up to their physician commanders. Docs want to do the right thing; if the frontlines help them in both awareness and accountability, the choice shifts from “Why should I do this” to “Why shouldn’t I do this” (from a question of “Opt in”, to “Opt out”). We applied tech to scale this approach in our ICU. It worked. I then made the leap from ICU Medical Director to founder of Elemeno Health.

If we want to radically transform quality and safety, let’s begin with team engagement.